Memory: How
it works - an overview

Albert
Einstein was a passenger on a train bound west from New Jersey.The conductor came by and requested the physicist's ticket.Einstein searched his pockets but couldn't

find
it. Not wanting to embarrass
the internationally known scientist, the conductor explained that he would
come back.

True
to his word, the conductor came back.Now
Einstein was frantic.He
couldn't find his ticket.The
conductor tried to calm him down, "Dr. Einstein, don't worry," he
said."I recognize you.I
believe you bought a ticket.There's
really no need to show it to me."

Are
there days when you feel like Einstein on that train?You can't remember where you left your keys.You waste your time during your busy work day chasing down that one
piece of paper that you just had in your hand.

Or
maybe you can't seem to remember names like you once did.And you just don't recall those facts and figures for your
meetings like you used to unless you have a cheat sheet?

So
is it just normal occasional memory lapses, is it just a natural part of the
aging process or is there a more serious underlying cause?Chances are good that it just a normal memory lapse that
might – or then might not – be related to the aging process.

That's
right!Your sagging memory may
have nothing to do with your age, despite what the medical community has
been telling us for . . . well, for as long as we can remember.

Memory
declines with age.That used to
be one of the laws of science.The
older you got, the less you could expect to remember. Now science is
reversing its decision on this one.While
perhaps the older mind may work just a little bit slower than it younger
counterpart, it seems that it is capable of storing and retaining just as
much as the younger brain.

Not
only that, but studies indicate that age does, indeed, provide us with
wisdom.As you age, you not
only don't lose your memory, but you are more adept at putting your memory
to work for.That is, you have
an easier time finding practical ways to use your knowledge.You're also able to draw lessons from the information you have stored
away.

If
you feel as if your memory is slipping, you should first check your
lifestyle for hints.Very
often, you'll find your memory sags when you're under stress.And who among us doesn't experience some stress at time or another?As the great motivational writer, Norman Vincent Peale used to say,
"You only need to drive past a cemetery to find people who are not
experiencing stress."The
point is that each of us is exposed to some level of stress at some point
everyday.It's how we handle
that stress that determines how our memory functions.

To
better understand why our memory sometimes falters, we need to understand
how the brain stores information.Information
is not stored in a single area of your mind, but are scattered over various
regions.You can think of you
brain as an area containing various "storage bins."Each time you collect a piece of information, you brain
decides how to categorize it and then what bin to drop it into.The next time you go looking for those facts, your brain then at
least has an idea of what bin it placed it in.

For
example, you may store the name of a person you just met several moments ago
in your recent memory right along side what you had for breakfast this
morning. Your brain also has a different "storage bin" for
long-term items, such as knowledge acquired years ago or your memories of
childhood.It also has a
different "storage bin" for short-term facts, that information
that you need at the moment, but you may not need tomorrow or even later in
the day.

You'd
be surprised how early in life that you begin to lose brain cells.This phenomenon occurs as early as your 20s.This is when your body manufactures less of the certain chemicals
that are essential to the ideal functioning of your memory.

There
are several logical reasons, besides aging that you may forget certain
things.Let's say you misplaced
a piece of paper.You'll get a
fuller appreciation for the complexity of the human memory once you realize
everything that goes into retrieving this information. While this may seem
to be a single action, it's really a series of smaller steps.You brain first retrieves the name of the object, in this case the
paper, and then its shape, function and other physical qualities associated
with it. In other words, your brain is reconstructing the entire image of
that paper from various areasor
"storage bins" of the brain.

Memory
experts explain that there are three reasons that may explain why you can't
remember where you left it.First,
you may not have clearly registered, or taken notice, of where you laid that
paper down.Second, if you did
register it in your brain, you failed to retain it. Finally, you may have
registered and retained where that important paper is, but you aren't able
to retrieve it.

If
you want to remember where you put your piece of paper or your keys, you'll
need to make an extra effort at going through all three stages of the memory
process.

Forgetting
may be as simple as failing to "encode" the action properly.Perhaps you were distracted at the moment that encoding process would
have been taking place.Don't
blame yourself, if the location of the paper never actually found its way
into your memory in the first place.

Note: Some statements in this article may not be
approved by the FDA. This article is for informational purposes only and
should not be taken as professional medical advice.